y/n looked up and saw kihyun, her eyes widening, being embarrassed by the way she presented herself.

"i don't know anymore." she replied, continuing to cry.

"follow me." he grabbed her hand and helped her up, then led her to his dorm.

"aren't the others home?"

"no, they're at the company. i stayed to clean the dorm."

he opened the door and made her sit on the couch. he sat next to her and tucked her hair behind her ear.

"y/n, you have two big hand marks on your cheeks. what happened?"

she didn't say anything and continued to cry. he sighed, thinking of ways he could make her open up.

"y/n, please just talk to me." he took her hands and put them in his. she calmed down a bit and was a little surprised at the small gesture.

"c-could i have some water first? my throat is dry."

he nodded and stood up, quickly walking to the kitchen, then coming back with a cup of water.

she took it from his hand and drank almost all of it. she put the cup down in front of her and took a deep breath.

"kwangji happened." she finally answered.

he looked at her, confused. "what do you mean? what happened?"

"hoseok was going to take me to another surprise date. he put a blindfold on me, and then the second i took the blindfold off, i was in their dorm."

"are they friends or something?"

"yeah, apparently they're good friends. anyways, kwangji started to explain that he got hoseok in a plan to bait me to become his girlfriend so he could take me to his dorm."

"so you and hoseok never really dated then?"

"nope. he said that he didn't care for me once and that it was just in the plan."

"i knew from the beginning this wasn't gonna go good."

he pulled her into a hug and held her tightly. she was still crying and hugged him back just as tight. she started to like the new feeling of being hugged by someone else, although she missed how safe she felt in hoseok's big arms.

kihyun let go of her and looked her in the eyes. the unfamiliar feeling from earlier was coming back, yet he still didn't know what it was. y/n, on the other hand, was just too sad to think of any feeling other than hatred and sorrow.

"since you kinda calmed down a bit, you should stay here for now and rest," he told her, standing up to put the vacuum away. she nodded and continued to drink her water, the negative thoughts slowly getting out of her head.

"kihyun."

"hmm?"

"did you and the others ever question about why i, and the other group wasn't on good terms?"

"honestly, yeah. ever since that incident, when we walked in on you arguing with kwangji, we knew something was up."

"i feel bad from hiding it from you all, especially when jooheon told me that friends don't hide stuff from each other."

"well, some things are meant to be hidden. you don't have to tell your friends everything that goes on in your life."

"i still feel guilty for hiding it from you all. i'll tell you guys soon, i promise."

"don't tell us if you feel uncomfortable about it. that is the last thing we want you to feel."

"i think it'll be better if i get it off my chest."

"if that's okay with you, you know we're all ears."

"that's truly the best thing i've heard from anyone."

he stopped what he was doing and looked at her. "what do you mean?"

"what i mean correlates to what happened with them, but if you want me to tell you now, i can."

kihyun walked over to y/n and kneeled in front of her. "let's save that for later. tell me what happened to your face."

"what do you mean?"

he pointed to the hand marks that were still there from earlier. "those."

she just sighed. "kwangji slapped me."

"why?"

"i was arguing with him, and he just did it out of anger."

"actually, we were all on good terms too. but seeing what he did to you, i don't think i would want to be friends with him or the others anymore."

"why?"

"seeing you like this makes me feel that you're more important than being friends with them."